How Do You Create Value in a Newsletter?
Advice to authors to create a newsletter is ubiquitous, and the reasons are generally solid. It’s a direct line of…
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Revealing Other Characters’ Inner Life
Stories aren’t primarily about the facts; they’re about the feelings—not just your characters’ emotions, but all of their inner life:…
Using Formula without Being Formulaic
Most creatives don’t set out to regurgitate remade versions of stories that have been told before. We want to boldly…
Hope and Action: Fuel for the Fire
Authors are often the purveyors of hope. We are the ones who explore human nature and draw people together through…
Protect Yourself from the Trolls
Many of us in our field utilize stock photos, whether images on our websites or social media, those used to…
What If Your Creative Flame Is Flickering?
Forging a career in publishing, as I’ve often written and spoken about, often encompasses an endless series of ups and…
The Trick to Writing Compelling Inner Life
Probably the comment I give most often in a writer’s manuscript is some variation of, “Let the reader in a…
How Do You Balance Creativity and Career?
Anyone building a creative career is running their own business, serving as CEO, CFO, CTO, and every other position—including manufacturing…
Making the Hard Decisions of a Writing Career
As creatives—and as businesspeople pursuing our creative careers—we face countless decisions every day. Most of them (hopefully) don’t carry life-or-death…
Are You Holding Back Your Own Writing Career?
If you don’t identify yourself as a writer you’re constantly pushing through lava to try to earn a title you…
Obstacles, Overwhelm, and the Oracle of Alex
One of the many wonderful things that has always awed me about dogs is how they teach us acceptance and…
What Does a Developmental Editor Do? GPS and Map View
One of my pet peeves about editing (and I have a few) is when an author will tell me or…